Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

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Random notes: February 26, 2013.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Obit watch: C. Everett Koop. (True story: I used to live a stone’s throw away from the DrKoop.com headquarters. I didn’t move; DrKoop.com did.)

The NYT has discovered NFA trusts.

But because of a loophole in federal regulations

Ever notice how the NYT, LAT, and other media outlets refer to things they don’t like as a “loophole”?

…buying restricted firearms through a trust also exempts the trust’s members from requirements that apply to individual buyers, including being fingerprinted, obtaining the approval of a chief local law enforcement officer and undergoing a background check.
Lawyers who handle the trusts and gun owners who have used them say that a majority of customers who buy restricted firearms through trusts do not do so to avoid such requirements. And most gun dealers continue to require background checks for the representative of the trust who picks up the firearm. But not all do.

Frankly, I don’t believe the NYT‘s claims here. I suspect they’re being dishonest with the readers. However, I haven’t looked into NFA trusts; I’m not at the point in my life where I’m ready to purchase automatic weapons. (However, my brother and I had a discussion last night, prompted by the existence of “The Sliencer Store” near the movie theater I went to. A silencer for some of my .22LR guns is becoming more tempting.) Are there any readers out there who know more about NFA trusts and are willing to comment?

The LAT, meanwhile, is pre-occupied with the non-existant “gun show loophole”.

Speaking of movies, I considered live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday, but I figured my live blog would go something like this:

7:30 PM: Ceremony finally starts.
7.45 PM: First call by a celebrity for “reasonable gun control”. Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to bed.

The one nice thing to come out of the Oscars, in my humble opinion, was that “Argo” started playing at the Alamo Drafthouses again, and at reasonable times. I ended up seeing a matinee showing yesterday.

Yes, it is very much a “Hollywood saves the world” movie, as well as a “heroic Federal employees” movie. Yes, “based on a true story” means that some of the facts have been fudged.

And I don’t care: “Argo” is a good story, well acted, well directed, and just the right length. Of the nominees I’ve seen, I liked it more than “Django Unchained” and (sorry, Mom) “Lincoln”. (I still want to see “Zero Dark Thirty”, but haven’t gotten to it yet. The other movie from last year I was excited about and didn’t get to see is “The Master”, which I think is going to have to wait for DVD.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Halt! Hammer-Zeit!

Monday, February 25th, 2013

…Jones returned to the apartment about 7 p.m. He attacked the resident with a hammer, hitting him several times in the head.
The resident wrapped Jones in a bear hug and the pair fell onto the floor. Jones hit the man with the hammer again. The man choked Jones.

Spoiler: things did not end well for the guy with the hammer. And no guns were involved.

This also gives me a chance to note the arrest of M.C. Hammer, who “became very argumentative” when the police asked him to get out of the car he was driving (“…that had expired registration and that was not registered to him”).

Every time I hear “U Can’t Touch This” on the radio, I want to call the station’s request line and ask them to play Rick James’ “Super Freak”. Then I want to say, “Oh, wait. You just did”, cackle maniacally, and hang up the phone.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Surprise of the day.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

The Statesman ran a positive profile of the Austin Sure Shots women’s pistol league.

The Sure Shots, one of the country’s largest and fastest growing pistol clubs for women, started in Austin a little more than two years ago and holds weekly practices at indoor ranges in the Austin area.

More:

A few members have even built AR-15 rifles from scratch, often spending weeks or months painstakingly assembling them. Some are custom painted — bright pink, blue, white — or decorated with hearts or skulls and are instantly recognizable on the range and at competitions.

Take that, Joe Biden, you clueless wart on the ass of the body politic.

“As a society I think we tend to be afraid of things we don’t know,” Sackett said. “Fear of the unknown is age-old and universal. I’m already less afraid because I know how to operate (a gun). Then, rather than the gun having power over you, you have power over the gun.”

And having a gun, and the power over it, is a lot better than pissing or shitting yourself.

(I see why my friend Andrew likes Gutfeld so much: I am so stealing “Guns: it’s like yoga but useful.”)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

40% followup.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Previously on WCD, we talked a little about the “40% of all gun sales are done without background checks” figure.

Ted Cruz has pointed out some of the same holes we discussed in those figures, and “Politifact Texas” decided they’d fact check him.

What did they find?

The 40 percent figure originated in a 1997 National Institute of Justice study by researchers Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago, who examined data from a 1994 telephone survey about gun ownership taken months after the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 took effect, mandating background checks of individuals buying guns at gun shops.

The law doesn’t apply to private sellers at gun shows, flea markets or people who post firearms for sale on the Internet.

What Politifact means by “people who post firearms for sale on the Internet” is unclear. If they mean people who sell to other people locally, that’s quasi-true. If a firearm – any firearm, rifle, pistol, or shotgun – is being shipped rather than sold face to face, the gun has to be shipped from a licensed dealer to a licensed dealer, and the receiving dealer has to do a background check before turning over the firearm.

Of the 2,568 households surveyed, only 251 people answered the question about the origin of their gun.
In those answers, Cook and Ludwig found that 35.7 percent of respondents reported obtaining their gun from somewhere other than a licensed dealer. (That has been rounded up to 40 percent.)

Rounding does not work that way!

When the Washington Post’s fact-checking project, the Fact Checker, asked Ludwig to revisit the data, the newspaper said, results suggested that purchases without background checks amounted to 14 to 22 percent, not 40 percent.

By the way, Politifact also quotes the Post as pointing out the small sample size means there’s a large margin of error: “plus or minus six percentage points”. So it could be anywhere from 8% to 28%. And by the way…

“…the survey was taken in late 1994, eight months after the Brady law went into effect, and the questions were asked about gun purchases in the previous two years. So some of the answers concerned gun purchases that took place in a pre-Brady environment.”

And more:

For his part, Cook, the other study author, told us he has no idea whether the 40 percent figure remains reliable. “This survey was done almost 20 years ago. … It’s clear there are a lot of transactions that are not through dealers,” Cook said. “How many, we’re not really clear on it. … We would say it’s a very old number.”
Other scholars had similar views.
“I don’t see how anyone could know that number,” said James Jacobs, Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University School of Law.

More:

The surveys took place after the law took effect, Cook said, but it’s correct that the vast majority of gun acquisitions identified by respondents took place before then, given that respondents were asked to focus on guns acquired within two years, meaning 1992 and 1993.

And there were 18 states that required background checks prior to Brady. But:

Even so, Cook told us, he and Ludwig did not use information on individual states in doing their analysis. He emailed that “the survey provides an accurate representation of the nation as a whole but not of individual states.” Also, he stressed, the survey had no questions about whether there had been a background check and respondents also weren’t asked the states where they had acquired their guns. He agreed there is “no way to reach any conclusions about background checks for any of the transactions that are reported in the survey.”

So, summing up: the figure was never 40%, but 36% (see, that’s how rounding works), and is probably closer to 20% before the margin of error kicks in, which could make the actual figure anywhere from 8% to 22%. And the survey was conducted in a pre-Brady environment. And the researchers themselves say (again I quote) there is “no way to reach any conclusions about background checks for any of the transactions that are reported in the survey”.

PolitiFact’s rating: “Half True”. I see nothing in their summary that refutes anything Ted Cruz said, or that justifies the “half true” rating.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | 1 Comment »

Random notes: February 5, 2013.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

In Idaho’s graceful, striated-marble Capitol, home to one of the more ardent and adamant state legislatures in the nation in standing up for the Second Amendment, lawmakers from both parties say that a torrent of public passion, even panic, about new proposed federal gun rules is pushing in only one direction: toward more guns, not fewer.

Hurrah Idaho!

First, they came for the owners of modern sporting rifles, and I didn’t speak out because I hate guns and want everyone to live in peace and harmony. Then they came to shut down the raves…

A concert company featured in a Times report Sunday detailing the drug-related deaths of 14 people who attended raves denounced the story in an online statement and took to social media to urge fans to speak out.

More:

Many of the concerts were staged with the blessing of local governments hungry for the revenue they brought in.
James Penman, the San Bernardino city attorney, said economics should never be a justification for raves. He long has urged officials to disallow the events at the National Orange Show Events Center there. Coroners’ reports show that two people have fatally overdosed at National Orange Show raves.
“The city should have zero tolerance for any activity where drugs are an integral part,” Penman said. “A rave without drugs is like a rodeo without horses. They don’t happen.”

Yesterday’s update from the Bell trial: Craig Rhudy of the “L.A. County district attorney’s office’s public integrity division” is on the stand now. So far, he’s testified that “former council members drew most of their nearly $100,000 salaries from panels that seldom met.”

Rhudy has charts.

The chart for 2006, for instance, showed that out of 20 City Council meetings, the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority met just once; the Community Housing and Public Finance Authorities each met five times, and the Surplus Property Authority had four meetings.
All of the defendants, except [Luis] Artiga, who was appointed in 2008, were paid $12,857 for each authority served in 2006.

In 2007, the Finance Authority met once, while the Housing Authority met twice. “By 2009, in spite of the fact that the panels continued to meet only sporadically, the pay for serving on each had jumped to $18,368, according to Rhudy’s chart.” In 2010, the Housing Authority was the only one that had a meeting.

And why does this matter? “In total, the defendants drew more than $1.3 million of their salaries from the authorities in question, Rhudy confirmed.”

I missed noting this over the weekend, but the LAT also ran a story on the “mountain of lawsuits” Bell is dealing with.

Former city leaders are suing the city. Bell is suing the former leaders. The city is suing its former lawyers. A European bank is suing Bell.

And the SEC and IRS are both investigating Bell’s bond sales. Here’s a great story:

Bell’s biggest concern is a lawsuit filed by Dexia Credit Local, part of a European banking group, over the city’s default on $35 million in bonds. The case involves 25 acres of undeveloped land near the 710 Freeway that Bell bought from the federal government with plans to lease it to a railroad.
Dexia bought all the lease revenue bonds the city issued to pay for the deal, which came to more than twice the city’s annual budget.
The deal went bad when an environmental group sued, arguing the city had failed to conduct the required environmental review. The judge agreed. Unable to lease the property — now worth far less than the bonds — Bell had no income to pay back Dexia.

The Richard III story has been reported everywhere, but I want to throw in a link to the Richard III Society, another group that deserves your support. And if you haven’t read it, I commend to your attention Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, History, Law, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

Today’s Austin quasi-gun show update.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

I have written previously about the activities of the Austin Public Safety Commission, an appointed “advisory body to the city council on all budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety, including matters related to the Austin Police Department, the Austin Fire Department, and the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services Department.”

The Public Safety Commission, it should be noted, is different from the Greater Austin Crime Commission, which has engaged in gun buybacks in the past.

I call that point out because the Public Safety Commission issued a series of “recommendations” to the city council yesterday. As reported in the Statesman, APSC recommends:

  1. “banning the leasing of government-owned facilities to gun shows”.
  2. “vendors at such shows to conduct background screenings”. This doesn’t make a lot of sense: we’re going to ban gun shows on public property, but we’re going to require vendors to conduct background screenings at the gun shows we’ve banned? I don’t believe the city can require vendors to conduct background checks at gun shows on private property; I think this is superseded by state preemption law.
  3. “…enforcing a state law prohibiting the carrying of firearms — except by those with concealed hand gun permits — in public parks, public meetings of government bodies, non-firearm related events at schools, colleges or professional events and political rallies, parades and meetings.” Wow, that’s a daring recommendation, guys. Enforce existing law.
  4. Instruct the “Austin City Council, Travis County Commissioner’s Court and Austin Community College and Austin Independent School District boards of trustees” to “divest ownership in any companies that manufacture and sell assault weapons or high capacity magazines to the public”.
  5. “Direct the Austin Police Department and Travis County Sheriff’s Office to study gun buy-back programs and come back with recommendations.” Oh, boy, I hope they do. As you may have noted at the link above, the last gun buy-back turned into a gun show. If they have another buy-back, I’d love to take a shot at picking up some more nice older Smiths.
  6. “Collect data on guns used in crimes”. I’m not sure from the context of the Statesman article what this means. I was listening to KLBJ-AM briefly last night, and caught part of a story on the commission recommendations; apparently, what they’re looking for is information about where crime guns come from. Are they stolen, legally purchased, bought at gun shows, etc.?

It is perhaps also worth noting that former mayor Will Wynn and current mayor Lee Leffingwell are members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and that Wynn is one of the members of that group who has been convicted of a criminal offense.

The more I hear out of these people, the better a recall election sounds.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Guns, Law, Politics, Travis County | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 1, 2013.

Friday, February 1st, 2013

Nobody needs a high-capacity assault snowmobile. Actually, I’m not even sure the general public should be allowed snowmobiles; perhaps we need to limit those to the police and military, people who have had special snowmobile training.

This is intended to enrage you:

At the 11th hour of its deadline to do so, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration on Thursday asked a judge to allow it to withdraw from a federal consent decree aimed at implementing sweeping reforms in the New Orleans Police Department.

The request is based on three factors:

  1. The consent decree “failed to disclose costs to fix Orleans Parish Prison until after the NOPD consent decree was executed”.
  2. Former prosecutor Sal Perricone and the NOLA.com comments scandal.
  3. There are questions about whether the consent decree’s provisions regulating secondary employment for police officers are compliant with federal labor law.

Previously. I am still unable to find an execution date for Antoinette Frank.

Over the past several weeks, dozens of other sheriffs from across the country have reacted with similar public opposition to Mr. Obama’s call for stiffer gun laws, releasing a deluge of letters, position papers and statements laying out their arguments in stark terms. Their jurisdictions largely include rural areas, and stand in sharp contrast to those of urban police chiefs, who have historically supported tougher gun regulations.

“C’est un Nagra. C’est suisse, et tres, tres precis.” (I’m surprised that quote, or the English translation, isn’t on the IMDB page for “Diva”.)

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Nine current and former Philadelphia Traffic Court judges were charged with conspiracy and fraud Thursday, capping a three-year FBI probe into what authorities said was rampant ticket-fixing and pervasive corruption on the bench.

The judges are being accused of pretty much what you’d expect: taking bribes to fix tickets.

According to the indictment, [Fortunato] Perri [one of the indicted judges – DB] got free landscaping and a patio for assisting one unnamed contractor with “dozens of Traffic Court citations.” He also is accused of accepting free auto services, towing, and a load of shrimp and crab cakes from Alfano, whose company, Century Motors, ran a towing service.

You know, I like shrimp. I like crab cakes. I wouldn’t go to prison for them, though.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Obits, Rage, Sarcasm, Schadenfreude, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 31, 2013.

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

Obit watch: Patty Andrews, the last surviving Andrews Sister. (NYT. A/V Club.)

If a publisher is reissuing a non-fiction book, do they have an obligation to go back and do fact checking? What if the facts have been called into question since the book was issued? What if the book is “38 Witnesses” by A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times?

In the years since, however, as court records have been examined and witnesses reinterviewed, some facts of both the coverage and the book have been challenged on many fronts, including the element at the center of the indictment: 38 silent witnesses. Yet none of the weighty counter-evidence was acknowledged when Mr. Rosenthal’s book was reissued in digital form by Melville — raising questions of what, if any, obligation a publisher has to account for updated versions of events featured in nonfiction titles. Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, said he knew about the controversy but decided to stand behind Mr. Rosenthal’s account. “There are, notably, works of fraud where revising or withdrawing the book is possible or even recommended, but this is not one of those cases,” he said. “This is a matter of historical record. This is a reprint of reporting done for The New York Times by one the great journalists of the 20th century. We understand there are people taking issue with it, but this is not something we think needs to be corrected.”

What is there to correct?

As early as 1984 The Daily News published an article pointing to flaws in the reporting. In 2004 The Times did its own summation of the critical research, showing that since Ms. Genovese crawled around to the back of the building after she was stabbed the first time (her assailant fled and returned) very few people would have seen anything.
The article quoted among others Charles E. Skoller, the former Queens assistant district attorney who helped prosecute the case and who also has written a book on it. “I don’t think 38 people witnessed it,” said Mr. Skoller, who had retired by the time of the interview. “I don’t know where that came from, the 38. I didn’t count 38. We only found half a dozen that saw what was going on, that we could use.” There were other mitigating factors as well; it was a cold night, and most people had their windows closed.

This 2009 NPR interview goes into more detail about the many problems with the popular narrative of the case.

This lead made me giggle:

George Ryan was released from a federal prison in the dark on Wednesday morning, and Illinois became a state with only one former governor behind bars.

Hey, as long as we’re talking about crooked governors:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s approval rating has fallen sharply among New York voters since he pushed restrictive gun laws through the Legislature, a poll released on Wednesday said.

And lying politicians:

…it is also curious that the White House refuses to provide any documentary evidence that he actually used the shooting range at Camp David, since he claims he uses it “all the time,” or that a presidential friend has not come forward to confirm the president’s comments.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, Law, Media, Music, Obits, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 30, 2013.

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Gun control works! Just ask Chicago!

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday.

More:

Chicago officials say Illinois has no requirement, comparable to Chicago’s, that gun owners immediately report their lost or stolen weapons to deter straw buyers.

Uh, that’s not what a “straw buyer” is, Monica Davey. (Nor does Davey mention that “straw purchases” are also a violation of Federal law, though rarely prosecuted according to the WP. One wonders how much of a deterrent Chicago’s law is to people who are already violating federal law.)

(Likewise, purchasing guns in other states, bringing them across state lines, and selling them on the Chicago streets violates multiple existing federal laws. Davey ignores that fact as well.)

Edited to add: Just saw this, and found it appropriate.

 

And I said, “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”
He said, “I can’t afford a million dollars,
and as I recall, you’ve got plenty of money.”
And I said, “Well, that’s one thing we have not.”

The Bell trial picked up again yesterday. Rebecca Valdez, the former city clerk who wasn’t actually the city clerk at first, is still on the stand.

Rebecca Valdez said that when she began working for the city, she learned the key to survival: Do whatever City Manager Robert Rizzo asked.
Valdez testified Tuesday that she was directed to sign unfamiliar documents, hand out incorrect salary information in response to a public records request from a resident and obtain signatures for doctored salary contracts.

The defense is attacking her credibility, “seeking to show that record-keeping in Bell was in disarray. Valdez testified that she signed minutes for meetings she didn’t attend, was appointed to the job in name only and sometimes made mistakes marking the times that meetings began and ended.”

And what’s this about her being the city clerk but not being the city clerk?

In 2004, then-City Clerk Theresa Diaz moved out of town, making her ineligible to hold the elected office. Valdez was given her title, but continued her job as an account clerk. Diaz continued to act as the record-keeper for the city, but Valdez testified that she was told to sign documents as the city clerk.

Also interesting:

The city clerk also testified that Victor Bello, one of the defendants, was banned from City Hall toward the end of his tenure, except to attend council meetings.
If Bello showed up, she was to tell the police chief and her supervisor. Twice a week, Valdez took Bello’s mail to his home, accompanied by code enforcement officers, she testified. Bello resigned from the council in 2008 but retained his six-figure salary after Rizzo named him assistant to the food bank coordinator.

Not “food bank coordinator”, but “assistant to the food bank coordinator”, and pulling in at least $100,000 a year. How do I get this job?

Ah, the Texas Highway Patrol Museum. You do remember the Texas Highway Patrol Museum, don’t you? Shut down by the Attorney General last year? Assets, including the building, being sold off?

Well, about that…

Lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office said Monday that a “cloud of procedural impropriety” is casting a shadow over the pending sale of the former Texas Highway Patrol Museum, and they recommended that the building be put back on the market.

The “procedural impropriety” seems to be that the high bidder says her bid was ignored. Also, the real estate broker would make a larger commission if the other bidder got the property. There’s some technical aspects that make it unclear which bid is best; that’s why the AG recommended that the building be listed again.

(Hattip on this to Grits for Breakfast. If Ms. Wong winds up getting the building, and we’re all still here, I want to do a road trip to Rosario’s Café y Cantina.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law, Museums, Sarcasm, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Random notes: January 29, 2013.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

There’s a follow-up to last week’s story about the felon trying to sell guns at the gun show: he’s now been charged with theft.

At the time of seizure, neither firearms were listed as stolen, according to the arrest affidavit, but by Jan. 10, police determined the rifle matched the make, model and serial number of the rifle reported stolen from the truck Dec. 9, according to the affidavit.

Interesting. Very interesting indeed.

Setting aside for the moment the subject of this story, there’s a kind of interesting legal aspect to it. In Nevada, if you own a casino (or are a “key man” in a casino) you can still gamble anywhere execpt your own casino (for obvious reasons). In Atlantic City, though, you’re not allowed to gamble period; at your own casino or someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. I find it curious that there’s such a difference in the law. I’m sure Mr. Fertitta does, too.

Real ninjas have their own mobile devices.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

If I had a (non-functional) rocket launcher…

Sunday, January 27th, 2013

I’d make the Seattle Police Department pay. $100 for it. At the next gun buyback.

I’m amused at how often the “someone turned in a non-functional rocket launcher at a gun buyback” trope has been showing up in the mass media. At least this story mentions the non-functional aspect in the first sentence.

In the six months after Seattle’s 1992 gun buyback — the city’s only other such effort — the average number of firearms-related homicides increased. The mean number of firearms-related assaults in Seattle also increased, as did the mean number of robberies with guns. Even the mean number of accidental shooting deaths more than doubled, according to data in a government journal.

Because paying $100 for an empty fiberglass tube makes the public safer. Way to go, guys.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Media | Comments Closed

Gun control works!

Saturday, January 26th, 2013

Most of those killed in Port Said on Saturday died of bullet wounds, hospital officials said. It was unclear who shot first, but witnesses said some of the civilian protesters brought shotguns or homemade firearms [Emphasis added – DB] to attack the prison.

(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter, though he didn’t draw the same conclusion I did.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

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